Starry Night Sensory Bag

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my newsletter, PGPB Weekly for updates, FREE printables and weekly special offers! You can also find all our most recent posts on Facebook, Twitter, and sneak peeks of our activities and behind the scenes looks at our family life on Instagram.
Please note, this post may contain affiliate links or product reviews for which we may receive compensation. For more details, please see our Terms & Conditions and Sponsors pages. Thanks for visiting!

Welcome Back! If you enjoy our posts, you can always find all our most recent on Facebook, Twitter, and sneak peeks of our activities and behind the scenes looks at our family life on Instagram.
Please note, this post may contain affiliate links or product reviews for which we may receive compensation. For more details, please see our Terms & Conditions and Sponsors pages. Thanks for visiting!

We love sensory bags at our house. Ever since I made our first sensory bag, Jumbled Snowman, over a year ago, they are always a guaranteed hit. It is a great way to provide hands on play for toddlers and preschoolers. So of course our Study of the Stars would not be complete without a little constellation sensory play.

Constellation Sensory Play

Sensory play is a great way to engage your young child’s senses as their little brains and skills are developing. It allows them to tangibly interact with the world around them in a safe and stimulative manner. I personally love using sensory play to engage them in hands on learning, particularly when the real world focus of our study may be otherwise out of reach… just like the constellations!

Making your Sensory Bag

My favorite thing about sensory bags – they are super affordable to make. For this one, I got ALL the materials at the Dollar Store, so it literally cost me $4 to make, with materials left over. You can also make them in 30 seconds, and the kids will be entertained by them for days! Cheap, quick, engaging… and no clean-up. Meets all my favorite kids activity requirements!

I grabbed all our supplies at my local Dollar Store, including the gallon storage bags. I would recommend using a higher quality Ziploc brand bag (which we normally use for our sensory bags). If they have a printed label on the bag, you can easily remove it with a Magic Eraser, and it stands up better to all the manipulation by toddlers.

I found an awesome bag of gold star confetti in the party section of the Dollar Store. Just make sure you use foil confetti, and not paper or it will disintegrate in the bag.

To make your bag, empty the contents of the clear hair gel into the gallon storage bag. Shake in the star confetti (I used about 1/3 of the bag pictured above). Before sealing your bag, lay it flat and squeeze out as much air as possible. To make the stars really shine, I taped our bag down to a piece of black poster board, cut to the size of the gallon bag.

Starry Night Sensory Bag

The girls will play with the Starry Night Sensory Bag for days. It’s a great fine motor skill challenge just to move the stars around in the bag.

And of course they like just feeling the cool of the gel, and squishiness of the bag too!

Fun for all ages…

And just in case you think your child might be too old for a sensory bag… last weekend, my in-laws were visiting. My father-in-law was playing with the girls in the playroom, found our Constellation Sensory Bag and wanted to know what it was. The girls eagerly told him and showed him how to play with it. When I carried them upstairs for bed, he was still diligently at work.

That night, after everyone went home, I was straightening up the playroom, and found this:

If you use cheaper, thinner plastic storage bags and the kids pick it up and squish it – yes. Using thicker, freezer bags and keeping it flat on the black background (you can even tape the sides down to the black background) prevented any issues.